It takes guts to appear on a reality show but even more so if that show is about weight and breaking into one of the most size-obsessed industries on the planet - dance.

Hannah Baines, an 18-year-old business manager from Doncaster, is no stranger to hard knocks but refuses to let them stop her from pursuing her dream career in ballet.

On the verge of giving up her dreams because she was deemed too fat to be a dancer, she says her appearance on Channel 4's Bigger Ballet proves once and for all that nothing should stand in the way of bigger girls desperate for a dancing career.

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Dancer: Hannah Baines, 18, has long dreamed of becoming a ballerina but her weight proved a problem

What's more, she adds, her role as Odette in the show's production of Swan Lake was a triumph in more ways than one; allowing her to finally beat the bullies who said she had no hope of becoming a dancer.

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'I have danced since the age of three and I have always loved it,' she explained in an interview with the Mirror.

'It’s what I do, I live and breathe it, but I have always been bigger, which is my own fault because I like food too much.'

Hannah, who is 5ft 3 and a size 18, added: 'I didn’t have a problem with my size when I was younger but when I got older I started going to dance competitions and people would laugh at me even though I was winning some contests.

'Getting laughed at for your dancing and size when you are so young made me feel horrible. It’s a terrible thing to do to a young girl.'

Bigger ballet: Hannah appears alongside other larger would-be ballerinas in a new Channel 4 show

Rehearsals: Wayne Sleep had six weeks to turn his troupe of amateur dancers into prima ballerinas

Cruising home: Co-star Carol used to dance for guests on cruise ships but has since let her ballet skills slide

Ballet has long been notorious for its emphasis on very slender dancers, with the average ballerina weighing somewhere between six and nine stone depending on height and muscle mass.

Its looks-obsessed culture was excoriated in the 2010 film Black Swan which shone a light on the extreme lengths some dancers go to in order to remain slim, as well as the competitive pressure common to the genre.

Those in the industry, however, say that the demand for slender dancers is not about glamourising very thin women; rather, the opposite.

Speaking to industry title Pointe magazine in 2011, Peter Beal, artistic director of Pacific Northwest Ballet, said: 'This is a profession of athletes; it is a profession where we look so closely at the body.

'We enjoy looking at the body—healthy, beautiful bodies. Sometimes both the excess and the underweight are unappealing to look at.

Childhood dream: Sarah, 38, from Leeds, danced as a child but regrets the decision to give it up